Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 11
Taffy took a marrow-bone and sat mousy-quiet for ten whole minutes, while her Daddy scratched on pieces of birch-bark with a shark’s tooth.
Who acts: Taffy, Daddy · What happens: take, sit, scratch · To what, where: marrow bone, pieces
This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Alphabet Was Made. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Taffy, Daddy), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher. This tree is Mova's own parse (the en model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Taffy | Taffy | PROPN | Number=Sing | 2 took | nsubj |
| 2 | took | take | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 bone | det |
| 4 | marrow | marrow | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 bone | compound |
| 5 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 4 marrow | punct |
| 6 | bone | bone | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 took | obj |
| 7 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 8 sat | cc |
| 8 | sat | sit | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 took | conj |
| 9 | mousy | mousy | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 quiet | amod |
| 10 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 9 mousy | punct |
| 11 | quiet | quiet | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 sat | xcomp |
| 12 | for | for | ADP | _ | 15 minutes | case |
| 13 | ten | ten | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 15 minutes | nummod |
| 14 | whole | whole | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 minutes | amod |
| 15 | minutes | minute | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 sat | obl |
| 16 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 20 scratched | punct |
| 17 | while | while | SCONJ | _ | 20 scratched | mark |
| 18 | her | her | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 19 Daddy | nmod:poss |
| 19 | Daddy | Daddy | PROPN | Number=Sing | 20 scratched | nsubj |
| 20 | scratched | scratch | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 took | conj |
| 21 | on | on | ADP | _ | 22 pieces | case |
| 22 | pieces | piece | NOUN | Number=Plur | 20 scratched | obl |
| 23 | of | of | ADP | _ | 26 bark | case |
| 24 | birch | birch | NOUN | Number=Sing | 26 bark | compound |
| 25 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 24 birch | punct |
| 26 | bark | bark | NOUN | Number=Sing | 22 pieces | nmod |
| 27 | with | with | ADP | _ | 31 tooth | case |
| 28 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 29 shark | det |
| 29 | shark | shark | NOUN | Number=Sing | 31 tooth | nmod:poss |
| 30 | ’s | 's | PART | _ | 29 shark | case |
| 31 | tooth | tooth | NOUN | Number=Sing | 20 scratched | obl |
| 32 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 took | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | take | past | Taffy | a marrow bone | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bone=Theme | ||||
| 2 | sit | past | Taffy not said here | minute | quiet property | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||
| 3 | scratch | past | Taffy's Daddy | pieces of birch bark | with a shark's tooth | vn cut-21.1-1 «NP V PP PP»: agent=Agent with tooth=Instrument |
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.
Text: «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, Project Gutenberg book 2781 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/10/11/